How many embryos to transfer???

Bookmark Discussion

Katieraggio wrote:

Hey everyone! I'm in need of some advice! This is my husband (age 30) and mine (age 27) first round of ivf. We've been TTC for about 7 years now with a result of 1 miscarriage. We've also done 2 IUIs and 3 rounds of clomid all with BFN. So far with our IVF we had 18 eggs retrieved, 11 fertilized, 4 blasts on day 5 (rated good), and the other 7 blast on day 6 (3 more were rated good and the last 4 were rated fair). I know how rare that is for all our embryos to make it. I'm super excited!!! But my practice has to recommend that we only transfer 1 embryo. Our dr says that ppl choose to transfer more all the time but he has to tell us the dangers of doing so. Needless to say now we don't know how many to transfer, we went into the process thinking we were going to transfer 2 and now we're nervous. We wouldn't mind twins but, I'm nervous that we will miscarry if we put in 2 vs. 1. I want a healthy baby. I get that we have a lot of embryos but just getting this far has depleted our bank accounts. We don't want to make the wrong decision for trying to be greedy or thinking about the money. We did find out that I don't ovulate every month and my husband has a low morphology count. Our practice rates the embryos by good, fair, and poor. Our dr had us do a FET, he said our chances of getting pregnant are higher this way. Any advice will help. Thanks,Katie

I done 2 5AA embryos each time and they both resulted in one baby. I couldn't imagine only putting one in and it not working and feeling like if I would have put two in it might have. plus then you have to pay for a whole nother cycle. I'm waiting to see what happened with this round of IVF I also put into but my ultrasound is not until 8/28

At 30/31, we transferred 1, resulted in one child. 9 months plus 6 later.. we transferred the second and it miscarried. I carried that baby for a whole month month more - my body was not giving up on it. I had to have a d&c. What if that'd happened if it did transfer both first time? Who knows. The only two times I've had two to chose from we did one and it worked. They'll always transfer the best quality first. But that doesn't mean that's the one that'll become a baby either.. I believe transferring more only increases the chance of a multiple pregnancy, not the chance of a/multiple take home babies.

Most practices are going to eSET (elective single embryo transfer). The best chance for a healthy baby and a healthy Mom. My dr said there is no evidence transferring two increases your chances of a pregnancy but it does increase your chance for multiples. I work in pediatrics and see too often the result of complications due to multiples.

I was dead set on transferring two. We had to bank embryos (I did PGD for Fragile X) and tested 11 and 4 came back normal. That being said all of a sudden transferring half of what we had became devastating. What if it didn't work, we lost half of what we had.... About 3 weeks before my transfer, I had to meet with a high risk (maternal fetal medicine) doctor because I have some health complications. He explained the 2 vs 1 scenario. Ultimately, for my health and for my baby's (who we had waited so long for), we transferred one. She is now a fiesty 19 mos old. I'm pregnant with our 2nd (about 24 weeks) and couldn't have been happier with our decision to go one at a time. Multiples can bring tremendous joy but also high risk for babies and mom. A good friend of ours delivered her twins at 27 weeks.... you have to do what is best for you. But if a healthy baby is the most important I'd say one is the way to go.

I was 29 and transferred one perfect and am now 14 weeks pregnant. Our doctor recommended transferring one because our issue is MFI (low count, motility, and morphology) and so there is a higher chance of both embryos taking since I'm generally healthy. I knew that twins automatically place your pregnancy in high risk category, and since we only had 2 embryos make it, we wanted to give each one a fighting chance.

I am 27 dh is 29 first IVF foe us . On 8/8 we did a fresh transfer with two 5 day grade A blasts transferred. We got our BFP on 8/17. I don't know if there are 1 or 2 in there right now. ultrasound is scheduled for 3 weeks away.

We had our confirmation of pregnancy ultrasound this week. We transferred 2 - 5 day blasts and found out at our appointment we are pregnant with 1 baby measuring right on track. I am glad we transferred 2 to be quite honest.

Our first Ivf, I was 35, husband was 33. We have low morphology as our issue, everything else was normal. I overstimulated, transferred 2, now have an 18 month old.

Our second Ivf, I am 37, husband 35. Still the only issue is low morphology. We transferred 2, no overstimulation, and I'm 25 weeks pregnant with twins. They did lower my meds this time around and I had no issues during the Ivf process.

My doctor is aggressive (or crazy lol) and recommended we transfer 3 due to my age. Thank goodness we didn't! We told him we weren't okay with selective reduction so that ultimately made our decision.

I was 49, my first round of IVF I chose 2 5-day embryos to transfer. I have one healthy daughter today. I want to give her a sibling. I'm 51 now and my doctor is dead set on only transferring one. I want to transfer 2 again, because really, I'm not going to do another round because it's expensive and because of my age. I'm SO torn. I'm glad I transferred 2 the last time!

I will be 48 doing my first round of ivf with frozen egg donation. My re asked how many I would like to transfer. I was set on 2 but he seemed to have concerns about high risk pregnancy and preterm delivery. How was your pregnancy overall? Did you use your own eggs or a donor? FYI...so happy to see another women close in age.

I read a paper on Elective Single Embryo Transfer (I think the author was Burk et al), and they found out that the chances to conceive are actually higher when you use one embryo, only. The theory is that when you use two or more embryos, the embryos usually are not of the exact same quality. The body picks up who the weaker ones are and tries to get rid of those. And then you often loose all of them..

We did a fresh transfer and I swore up and down when people asked that my doctor would NEVER transfer two. But sure enough on the transfer day she suggested transferring 2. We agreed with her. Ours were 2 good quality morulas very close to blast stage. They both implanted. But by 8 weeks I had vanishing twin and only had 1 baby. I’m 20 weeks and it’s been a great pregnancy so far! 2 is a big decision! But I trusted what my doctor said. If she would have said 1, we would have done 1. We will never know which embryo it was that worked!

Just a side note: I am a twin so would have been comfortable with 2, if you do not want multiples or are adamantly against it, just go with 1.

Our last successful ivf cycle they put back 2 nice 5day blasts. For boosting chances or not - just felt I'd love to have twince if blessed. Looking back I think we did right. One of our beautiful embies vanished. Only one made home. This is very personal decision. I'd also follow the dr's advice. Good luck!

The material on this website is provided for educational purposes only and is not to be used for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment, or in place of therapy or medical care. Use of this site is subject to our terms of use and privacy policy.